Package for an individual portion



Feb.

T F- DONOFRIO PACKAGE FOR AN INDIVIDUAL PORTION Filed Sept. 1, 1960INVENTOR. THOMAS F. DONOFRIO A T708 Ne v5 United States Patent 3,021,001PACKAGE FOR AN INDIVIDUAL PORTION Thomas F. Donofrio, Toledo, Ohio,assignor, by mesne assignments, to Silver Creek Precision Corporation,New York, N.Y., a corporation of New York Filed Sept. 1, 1960, Ser. No.53,558 2 Claims. (Cl. 206-56) This invention relates to small packages,and more particularly to packages for individual portions or smallquantities of various materials, and will be illustrated in thespecification as being a package for anindividual portion of a foodstuffor similar material such as liquid or paste.

A number of suggestions and disclosures have been made where packages ofsmall size have been molded or otherwise formed from sheet material andautomatb cally filled at high speed with small quantities of asubstance, such as food, and then sealed (usually by the application ofheat to fuse the package and the cover material together), the wholesubject matter being concerned with high speed production, high speedfilling, automatic sealing, etc. Little thought has been given to thedesirability of packages of this general type being made available forsmall quantity users, particularly those users who do not wish to investin high speed automatic machinery and yet wish to be able to obtain theadvantages of packages of this type.

It is, therefore, the principal object of this invention to provide asmall, formed, cup-like package originally manufactured in packageunits, say, of four, six, eight or ten in number, with the packagesarranged, for exi into a unit generally indicated by the referencenumber ample, in a single or double row and removably attached to eachother at their adjacent sides, similar cover units also being provided,and the package being adapted for manual closing without the necessityof heat or other sealing equipment, the package being easily openableand yet sufficiently tightly sealed to permit safe handling.

It is yet another object of the instant invention to provide anindividual portion package for foodstuffs, or the like, each of thepackages comprising a cup-shaped body having a generally flat bottom andan area at its bottom less than the area at its top, with upwardlydiverging walls, outwardly extending shoulders and a top flange, thereturn or marginal walls of the shoulders being inwardly inclined so asto provide an undercut recess and the package cover having a centraldepression with complementary vertical portions to mate with theundercut recess of the package and to permit the cover to be snappedinto place, retained by the mating undercut portions of the cover andpackage, and yet readily removed by slight deformation of the cover.

These and other more specific objects and advantages of a packageembodying the invention will be better understood from the followingspecification and from the drawings, in which- FIG. 1 is a view inperspective of a package unit comprising a single row of six adjacentindividual packages and showing two of the packages filled with a liquidmaterial;

FIG. 2 is a view in perspective of a cover unit designed for coveringthe packages in the package unit illustrated in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a front view in elevation of the package unit of FIG. 1covered by the cover unit of FIG. 2, with a part of one of the packagesbroken away to illustrate the cooperation between the package andthecover whereby the cover is removably retained in place on the package without the necessity for the use of an adhesive or any adhesionbetween the materials of which the package and cover are made, and

FIG. 4 is a view in bottom perspective of a single 3,021,001 PatentedFeb, 13, 1962 closed package showing its cover in place and therelationships of various parts and portions of both the package and thecover.

In FIG. 1 there is illustrated a plurality of individual packages 10each of which has a molded cup-shaped body 11. In this embodiment of theinvention, 'the'bodie's 11 are illustrated as being approximately squarein horizontal plan and as having substantially flat bottoms; 12 (FIG.4), with central convex portions for strengthening purposes. Each of thepackages 10 is shown as having four upwardly extending, divergent sidewalls 13, the side walls 13 and bottom 12, of course, being continuous,for

example, formed from a single sheet of a thin material such as sheetplastic, waxed paper, or other material.

At the upper end of each side wall 13 there is formed an outwardlyextending shoulder 14 and the shoulders 14 on all four of the side walls13 cooperate to form an outwardly extending, generally horizontal shelfwhich extends around the body. Each of the shoulders 14 has an upwardlyand inwardly extending shelf margin 15. The shelf margins 15 areinwardly directed at anangle of,

. say, three to five degrees to the vertical and the joining anglebetween the shoulders 14 and margins 15 is slightly rounded to avoid thecreation of sharp stress concentration points. At the upper edges of theshelf margins 15the material from which the package 10 is formed isturned over horizontally forming outwardly directed lips 16 whichcooperate to form a continuous planar flange 17 extend ing around theperimeter of the upper edges of the shelf margins 15. The flange 17 alsoforms a main lip on the package body 10.

FIGURE 1 shows a group of six packages 10 assembled 18, which unit isone row wide with adjacent packages connected to each other along theedges of their flanges 17, thereby forming a unit which can befabricated, handled, filled, capped, shipped, etc., as one piece. Whilethe package unit 18 is shown as having six packages in a single row, itwill be appreciated, of course, that the number of packages in a row islimited only by the facility required to handle each unit during itsfabrication,

filling, closing and shipping and, as will be discussed more fullybelow, packages embodying the invention may also be fabricated in unitsconsisting of two adjacent rows of individual packages.

In FIGURE 2 a group of package covers 19 is shown. Each of the packagecovers 19 has a central recess 20 having a generally flat horizontalbottom 21 and generally vertical side Walls 22 around the margins of thebottom 21. The side walls 22 terminate at their upper edges in acontinuous planar flange 23 which extends around the perimeter of therecess 20.

The outside horizontal dimensions of the side walls 22 of the recess 20are such and the side walls 22 are so flared downwardly and outwardlythat the cover 19 is snugly insertable in the angular space bordered bythe shelf margins 15 of the package 10, the flare on the walls 22 of thecover 19 also being in the order of three to cover 19 may be grasped inorder that it can be removed from a package 10. While two tabs 24 areillustrated in the drawings, it will be appreciated, of course, thateach of the covers 19 could be formed with only one tab 24 at one sideand that the opposite side of the flange 23 could be of the same widthas the corresponding side of the cover flange 17. Such an arrangementcould pro vide for a package and cover unit two packages wide with theremoval tabs 24 of each row of covers 19 extending in oppositedirections.

FIGURE 2 shows a unit 25 of individual covers 19 designed to close theunit 18 of packages 11} shown in FIG. 1. The assembly of covers 19 onpackages 10, while in their respective units, is shown in FIG. 3, and anindividual sealed package is illustrated in FIG. 4. Both the packageunit 18 and the cover unit 25 are designed so that individual packageswith their covers 19 can readily be removed from the unit after assemblyis shown in FIG. 3. To this end, the joining flanges 17 of adjacentpackages 10 are weakened, for example, by perforations alonginterpackage lines 26 and the flanges 23 of adjacent covers 19 aresimilarly weakened as by perforations along intercover lines 27. Afterassembly of a cover unit 25 on a packaging unit 18 with the covers 19all snapped in place on their respective packages 10 the unit of filledpackages may be handled in that manner. An ultimate user, for example, awaitress in a restaurant or a stewardess on an airplane, may separatethe packages from each other by simultaneously tearing along the partinglines 26 and 27 for the removal of each package from a complete unit.

I claim:

1. A package comprising a molded cup-shape body having a generally flatbottom and upwardly extending, divergent side walls, outwardly extendingshoulders at the upper ends of said walls forming an outwardly extendinggenerally horizontal shelf around said body, upwardly and inwardlyextending shelf margins on the outer side of said shelf, turned out lipsat the upper ends of said margins, said lips forming a continuous planarflange extending horizontally around the perimeter of the upper edges ofsaid margins and said body; a removable cover having a central recesswith a generally flat bottom and generally vertical side walls and acontinuous, planar flange extending horizontally around the perimeter ofthe recess at the upper edge of the recess, the outside horizontaldimensions of said recess side walls being snugly insertable in thespace between the shelf margins of said package body and the generallyvertical walls of said recess being downwardly flared complementarily tothe upward and inward extent of the shelf margins of said package body,the flange on said cover extending horizontally beyond the flange onsaid package body on at least one side when said cover is inserted insaid package.

2. A multiple package unit consisting of a plurality of package 'bodiwaccording to claim 1 integrally molded from a single piece of resinoussheet material with the packages extending in a row one package wide anda plurality long, the planar flanges of adjacent packages beingcontinuous and weakened along interpackage lines extending across therow and a multiple cover unit consisting of a plurality of coversaccording to claim 1 integrally molded from a single piece of resinoussheet material with the individual covers extending in a row one coverwide and a similar plurality long, the planar flanges of adjacent coversbeing weakened along intercover lines extending across the row and theflanges thereof extending horizontally beyond the flanges of saidpackage bodies in a direction transverse to the extent of the row.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS1,168,731 McKee Jan. 18, 1916 2,568,697 Amberg Sept. 25, 1951 2,582,655Schenk Jan. 15, 1952 2,724,539 Schenk Nov. 22, 1955 2,947,463 ConklinAug. 2, 1960 FOREIGN PATENTS 280,201 Switzerland Apr. 16, 1952

